lithium-ion batteries

Cincinnati and its private partners on Tuesday announced the latest places to charge your electric vehicle: Cincinnati Zoo, University of Cincinnati, Xavier University, Cincinnati State and Findlay Market.

On the same day, Newport on the Levee announced it has three charging stations on the P1 level of its parking garage. Just last month AAA added one on Orphanage Road in Fort Wright. Another AAA charging station on Red Bank Road in Fairfax opened in 2013.

By 2015 President Obama has said he wants to have one-million plug-in electric vehicles on the road. It’s unclear if that’s going to happen. But slowly researchers are making progress in building a better battery and states are realizing the battery market is a very lucrative one.

This month Ohio State's Buckeye Bullet is trying to break the 400 mph barrier in the salt flats of Utah. It runs on lithium-ion batteries. This is an earlier video when the futuristic car was hitting speeds in the 300s.

The rush is on for a better battery that will be smaller, hold more power, and charge faster. The Department of Energy announced a new partnership with this challenge: Invent batteries that are five times more powerful and one fifth the price in just five years. The Joint Center for Energy Storage Research or JCESR will gather brain power from five national labs, five universities and industry. Ann Thompson, in "Focus on Technology," reports on what kind of battery you can expect in electronic devices and cars and when.